FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT NAVY PILOT - PAGE 2

Harry Brown is going looking for a long-lost friend.The retired Navy pilot on March 16 will climb aboard a World War II airplane and follow the path of a cross-county flight he took in 1943 in a Navy bomber - a ride that ended in a crash-landing in the swamps east of DeLand.Brown wants to recover the bomber - a Navy SBD, complete with six wing guns and twin .25-caliber machine guns in the rear cockpit. If it is found, the local Confederate Air Force will haul it out with a heavy-lift helicopter and restore it for display at the DeLand Naval Air Station Museum.

MR. GENTRY, 2880 Elmwood Lane, Mount Dora, died Monday, May 30. He was a retired service manager for Cumming Diesel, Columbus, Ind. Born in West Franklin, Pa., he moved to Central Florida in 1984. He was a Navy pilot during World War II. He was a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association and a founding member of the Cathay Pacific Airways Airline. Survivors: wife, Rosemary; brother, William R., Memphis, Tenn. Beyers Funeral Home, Leesburg.

ROCCO E. LAGONEGRO, 71, Cedar Lane, DeLand, died Sunday, March 14. Mr. Lagonegro was a retired air traffic controller. Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., he moved to Central Florida in 1984. He was a member of St. Peter's Catholic Church, DeLand. He was a past secretary of the West Volusia Bass Anglers Club, and past treasurer of Citizens for Responsible Boating. He was a Navy pilot in World War II. Survivors: wife, Ellen; son, James, Huntington, N.Y.; daughters, Ellen A., Holbrook, N.Y., Jane Ewen, Winter Park, Christina, DeLand; sister, Lorraine Dolan, Myrtle Beach; two grandchildren.

A former Navy pilot should get $5 million to $10 million in damages for alleged sexual assault at the 1991 Tailhook convention, her lawyer said in closing arguments Thursday. ''We have lost the best of the best,'' attorney Dennis Schoville said of Paula Coughlin. Coughlin, who resigned from the Navy in February, is suing Hilton Hotel Corp. and the Las Vegas Hilton, site of the convention, claiming the resort failed to provide proper security. After the 1991 convention, more than 80 women claimed they were sexually assaulted by drunken Navy and Marine aviators, and a dozen filed lawsuits in state and federal court here.

A panel of officers has refused to drum out a Navy pilot who admitted he groped women and was portrayed by some witnesses as a ringleader in the Tailhook sexual harassment scandal. The three-member board of inquiry Wednesday unanimously voted to retain Lt. Gregory Geiss, a flight instructor at Meridian Naval Air Station, Miss., after a two-day hearing at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, a Navy spokesman said Thursday. The panel concluded Geiss was guilty of misconduct but that the circumstances of the case did not warrant separation from the Navy, a Navy official said.

A Navy pilot was still missing in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday after he and an officer ejected Thursday from their F-14 Tomcat fighter jet moments before it plunged into the water, authorities said. The jet's radar intercept officer was rescued, taken to the naval hospital in Portsmouth for observation and released early Friday, said Mike Maus, a Navy spokesman. The plane, based at the Oceana Naval Air Station, crashed Thursday 50 miles off the North Carolina coast, Maus said. The cause of the accident was unknown.

A Navy airplane slammed into a ridge in northern New Mexico during a snowstorm, killing a battle group commander and a Navy pilot with 4,000 hours of flying time. The twin-engine FA-18D, a two-seat training version of the Navy's single-seat FA-18 Hornet fighter and attack aircraft, crashed into Mogote Ridge on Wednesday morning, authorities said. The wreckage was found in mountainous terrain on Thursday. Aboard were Rear Adm. James G. Prout III, 51, and Cmdr. Joseph G. Kleefisch, 41, the pilot.

TALLAHASSEE -- Prompted by new intelligence information indicating that a Navy pilot from Florida shot down in Iraq more than a decade ago might still be alive, state legislators on Tuesday sent urgent word to Washington to "take all actions necessary" to determine Capt. Scott Speicher's fate. The Florida House unanimously approved a memorial (HM 429) that asks members of Congress, the White House and other national leaders to keep up the pressure on Middle East sources to help the U.S. government find out more about Speicher's condition and whereabouts.

A former Navy pilot said she saw a uniformed Paula Coughlin getting her legs shaved by a male officer the day before the Tailhook whistle-blower was groped by drunken aviators in a hotel hallway. In videotaped testimony played in federal court Monday, Tamara Redford said she remembered the incident in a suite at the Las Vegas Hilton because she felt the woman getting her legs shaved was not showing respect for her Navy uniform. "I was appalled," Redford said. Redford said she didn't know who Coughlin was at the time.

Growing up in Maitland, John "Skip" Lussier taught his younger siblings to ride a bike and drive a car after his father's sudden death. On Thursday, the 39-year-old Navy pilot taught President Bush to fly a S-3B Viking when Cmdr. Lussier landed the jet carrying Bush onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. The aircraft carrier arrived off the California coast from the Persian Gulf with its crew of 5,000 after the longest deployment in three decades. Skip Lussier's brother, Jim, and sister, Angela Tanner, watched the dramatic landing on television in Orlando.